Maximilien Robespierre: The bloody tyrant behind the French Revolution's 'Reign of Terror'

Born on 6 May 1758 in Arras, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre entered a family that was already a part of the legal profession.

His father François de Robespierre was a practising lawyer who struggled after the death of Robespierre’s mother, Jacqueline Carraut, in 1764.

Soon after, he reportedly abandoned his children, who were then raised by relatives committed to their schooling and moral care, including members of their mother’s family such as Jacques Carraut. 

Early in life, Robespierre developed a reputation for discipline and seriousness. At the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, he received a classical education and read Enlightenment philosophers who influenced him for decades.

He had read Rousseau with respect and had generally accepted Rousseau's idea of the 'general will' as the basis for a fair society.

He had won a scholarship to attend the school, graduated near the top of his class in law and later earned a prize for Latin public speaking. 

After completing legal studies, Robespierre returned to Arras and earned public respect as a principled lawyer, often refusing payment from poor clients.

At the same time, he joined local academies, including the Académie d’Arras, where he regularly gave speeches that promoted justice, argued for equal rights and urged moral reform among local officials.

By 1789, he had largely established himself as a figure who was known for honesty, and his election to the Estates-General confirmed his support among the Third Estate.

Robespierre believed that politics must promote virtue. For him, the state existed to promote moral behaviour and to protect equality.

He insisted that true liberty could not survive in a society that allowed corruption or betrayal.

Therefore, he defined political opponents as essentially threats to the survival of the Republic rather than ordinary rivals. 

He demanded the end of monarchy, supported universal male suffrage, and supported the Convention's abolition of slavery across the French colonies, which took effect on 4 February 1794.

At the same time, he promoted economic controls to limit prices and ensure food access for the urban poor.

To him, justice required both legal rights and material protections.

Within the Jacobin Club, Robespierre quickly became a moral voice. Known among supporters as "The Incorruptible," he refused to accept any compromise with moderate factions.

For example, he condemned the Girondins for hesitating to punish royalists and said their weakness would invite disaster.

Eventually, his strict moral code increasingly became the justification for revolutionary terror. 

At first, Robespierre opposed war with foreign monarchies, as he feared that generals would gain political power and use war to destroy the Republic.

However, once France entered the conflict in 1792, he insisted that military victory depended largely on internal unity, so he supported harsh measures against anyone who questioned the Revolution’s direction.

Robespierre’s influence grew after the fall of the monarchy in August 1792. Inside the National Convention, he joined the radical Montagnards and began pushing for harsher action against counter-revolutionaries.

When the king was placed on trial, he declared that Louis XVI must die so that the Republic could live. 

In early 1793, France faced invasion from foreign enemies and rebellion from royalist forces.

Because Robespierre blamed these threats primarily on deliberate political disruption and called for the removal of internal enemies, he urged the removal of the Girondins, who still argued for moderation.

By June, his faction had effectively succeeded in expelling them from the Convention. Many were later executed. 

On 27 July 1793, Robespierre joined the Committee of Public Safety. This twelve-man body took charge of war policy and maintained public order through the administration of internal justice and legal systems.

It became the most powerful institution in revolutionary France. Robespierre had gradually assumed control over its decisions by late 1793 and then used his position to pursue a campaign against anyone accused of resisting revolutionary values.

The Law of Suspects, passed on 17 September 1793, expanded the criteria for arrest to include anyone whose actions, words, or associations suggested opposition to the Revolution. 

Several months later, he had publicly accused former allies such as Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins of corruption and weakness, so both were executed in early 1794.

His betrayal of Desmoulins, who had been a friend from his schooldays, shocked many.

When he eliminated rivals on the left and right, Robespierre removed all checks on his power and became the leading voice of revolutionary government. 

Between September 1793 and July 1794, Robespierre turned the Revolution into a campaign of fear.

Since he argued that terror served justice and that virtue required punishment of the wicked, he ordered the Revolutionary Tribunal to speed up trials and punish anyone suspected of disloyalty. 

Thousands were arrested across France. In Paris alone, over 2,600 were executed by guillotine.

Across the country, more than 16,000 died under legal sentence, while thousands more were killed without formal trials or died in prison.

According to estimates by historian Donald Greer, approximately 16,594 people were executed by legal sentence, while another 10,000 to 12,000 died in prison or were killed without trial, which placed the total number of deaths during the Terror close to 28,000.

Victims typically included clergy who refused loyalty to the Civil Constitution, nobles, former revolutionaries, and ordinary citizens denounced by neighbours.

Robespierre also turned his attention to religion. He rejected Catholic tradition but did not support atheism.

Instead, he introduced the Cult of the Supreme Being, a civic religion based on moral conduct and public festivals.

On 8 June 1794, he led the Festival of the Supreme Being, which he had personally designed and made compulsory by decree, and he wore a symbolic robe and he addressed vast crowds from atop a papier-mâché mountain on the Champ de Mars.

To many deputies, his behaviour often looked like that of a self-appointed prophet. 

Soon after, on 10 June, the Law of 22 Prairial removed all legal protections for the accused, eliminated jury trials, and limited possible verdicts to acquittal or death.

Under this law, the Tribunal could effectively convict based only on the judge’s personal judgement.

As trials required no defence lawyers or witnesses, executions increased sharply. Even members of the Convention, once his allies, began to fear for their lives. 

Because Robespierre had refused to explain whom he intended to denounce and instead had spoken in unclear terms about plots and moral decay, panic quickly spread among those closest to him.

Day by day, his allies became his enemies, and fear of arrest spread rapidly through the Convention. 

On 26 July 1794, Robespierre gave a long speech warning of traitors inside the Convention. However, he refused to identify them.

So, the next morning, his opponents acted. When he attempted to speak, delegates shouted him down and voted to arrest him and his closest allies, including Saint-Just, Couthon, and his brother Augustin Robespierre.

Prominent figures such as Paul Barras and Joseph Fouché played key roles in organising the coup. 

Later that night, they gathered supporters at the Hôtel de Ville in a failed attempt to resist.

By midnight, most of their followers had deserted them. Early in the morning, Robespierre reportedly suffered a gunshot wound to the jaw, either self-inflicted or, as many accounts suggest, fired by gendarme Charles-André Merda, which left him unable to speak.

He was taken to the Conciergerie, where he lay bleeding as he awaited execution. 

On 28 July, Robespierre and twenty-one of his allies were summarily executed following a decree by the Convention, apparently without formal trial.

Crowds watched in silence as the man who had sent so many to the guillotine now faced it himself.

Because his death largely ended the Reign of Terror, the Convention immediately repealed the harshest laws, shut down the Tribunal, and arrested the most fanatical Jacobins. 

In the following months, hundreds of political prisoners were released, and a period of moderation began.

This phase, which was known as the Thermidorian Reaction, aimed to restore order without reviving the monarchy.

Robespierre’s death allowed many who survived the Terror to distance themselves from the violence and blame him for its excesses. 

Robespierre is one of the most divisive figures of the Revolution. His defenders argue that he was loyal to the poor and aimed to build a Republic based on equality and justice, and they point to his personal honesty and his refusal to enrich himself, and they frequently cite his record of backing radical reforms that transferred power to the lower classes. 

Critics typically see a man driven by his belief in virtue. They argue that he turned the Revolution into a campaign of cruelty and suspicion, where moral purity became a reason for murder.

For them, Robespierre became the model of the tyrant who destroys liberty while claiming to protect it. 

During the 200th anniversary of the Revolution in 1989, public debate over his reputation returned, as streets, schools, and statues that bear his name remain across France, though efforts to honour him often spark controversy.

Scholars such as Ruth Scurr, in her biography "Fatal Purity," have continued to debate whether he betrayed the Revolution or followed its harsh logic. 

Today, Robespierre’s name raises difficult questions about violence and justice and forces debate over how moral claims guided political action.

His life still forces readers to consider whether good intentions excuse brutal actions, and whether a Republic built on fear can ever survive.

His remains were buried in a common grave at the Errancis Cemetery, a site that bears no marker.